Anyone who has talked to me about AdWords knows I am a stickler for measurement. Especially when it comes to talking about cost vs profit. The better you understand relationships between how you spend your AdWords dollar and how much money you make in return, the better you can optimize that spend, for even more profit yet.
Obvious.
But advertising cost vs profit is devilishly hard to measure and analyze accurately for a multitude of reasons – and thereby neglected by businesses of all sizes. Especially when it comes to service oriented business where phone calls are a primary part of the value chain.
That is why I am so excited about AdWords Call Metrics. The current version of the product is not a full blown call metrics system, but it is a big step. And rumor has it a more robust version is being tested. We can now start talking to clients in terms of cost-per-call, cost-per-completion, cost-per-minute, etc.
This feels big. Huge even 😉 Reminds me of waking up one morning and discovering my $200 a month Urchin Analytics had morphed into Free Google Analytics.
Call Metrics starts out free, but may eventually end up costing as a service or some Pay-for-Call model. Possible future cost does little to curb our current enthusiasm.
Update: As of July 19, 2011 – Completed manually dialed calls will be charged a flat rate of $1.00 USD. Click-to-call calls will still be charged the cost of the click. Inside AdWords
As of this post the call metrics feature is being rolled out to all advertisers. Some of our clients have it, some don’t – we are not seeing a real pattern to the roll out. Hopefully this feature will be available to all soon.
Because this feature is new the documentation is thin, case studies are few, and best practices are still being formulated.
Stay posted. We are really digging into this.
We are also curating AdWords Call Metrics documentation and resources. Suggestions welcome.
AdWords Call Metrics Documentation
AdWords Call Metrics Resources
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